Chicago's State Street Mall Called Transit `Disaster'

Carl Nolte, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Monday, November 24, 1997

1997-11-24 04:00:00 PDT Chicago -- Mayor Willie Brown and environmental activists want to ban private cars on San Francisco's Market Street -- but in Chicago, at least, this is an idea whose time has come and gone.

Chicago turned nine blocks of State Street into a transit-only mall in 1979. The idea was a total flop -- "a disaster," Chicago planners say -- and the street was refurbished at a cost of $24 million and opened to cars again last year.

"We walked into it with our eyes wide open," said G. Brent Minor, vice president for business development at the La Salle Bank, "and it was just a mistake, an absolute mistake.

"God, don't let them do that in San Francisco." State is one of those great American streets, like Broadway. Or it was, anyway. It is lined with huge old buildings by Louis Sullivan and Daniel Burnham, leaders of the Chicago School of architecture.

Two of the street's biggest department stores -- Marshall Field's and Carson Pirie Scott -- were considered architectural masterpieces. There were theaters, nine other huge department stores and the Palmer House, for years the best hotel in town.

The corner of Madison and State is ground zero in Chicago, the center of the city -- everything is measured north and south and east and west from here. It was, at one time, the busiest intersection in the world.

State is the main drag of the Loop, that portion of the great clanking elevated train network that is very close to what Nelson Algren called "the rusty heart" of Chicago.

"This is the main street of Chicago, the totem pole of the tribe," said Norman Elkin, a planning consultant and leading light in

Frank Sinatra sang of it: "On State Street, that great street, I just want to say/They do things they never do on Broadway." When he sang that in the huge gaudy old Chicago Theater at Lake and State, he brought down the house.

MUCH LIKE MARKET STREET

State is similar to Market Street. State is more central to the city's life, but Market is longer and wider. The two streets have a similar history. They emerged as the main commercial streets at the same time -- the 1870s. Both were destroyed by fire: State in 1871, Market in 1906. Both even had cable cars.

Market has two subways, State has one, and both have bus lines. The mix of office buildings and retail stores is similar, and the streets both face competition from the suburbs and from other parts of the city. Market has Union Square, State has North Michigan Avenue. Both competitors are in the top five in the country in retail sales.

About 30 years ago, something started to go terribly wrong with State Street. Chicago is big and tough, but it is just like other cities: Suburban malls started drawing away middle-class shoppers, and in 1976, Water Tower Place, the country's first vertical mall, opened on North Michigan Avenue, just across the river. North Michigan drained off the upscale shoppers, too. It became "The Magnificent Mile," and the mile-long heart of State Street started to die. Many of the big stores on State closed; in their places came fast-food joints and discount stores.

'MALL' BOOM

The "mall" boom was on in other cities, starting in Kalamazoo, Mich., which began a national trend by closing its main street to cars. Other cities did the same: Milwaukee; Portland and Eugene, Ore.; Little Rock; Norfolk, Va.; Poughkeepsie, N.Y.; Denver and Boulder, Colo.; Santa Monica; Fresno; and Sacramento -- all closed off streets. Some had buses and some had rail, but none had cars.

At its peak, there were 200 urban centers where cars were banned.

State Street was the biggest. "Who could resist?" said Minor. "We had a federal program for it. They had the dollars for us," said Elkin.

"We all agreed," said Minor. "We needed the mall."

In 1979, at a cost of $17 million, the makeover was complete. The sidewalks were widened. New street lamps were put in. State got new bus stops with a trendy '70s look with roofs that looked like bubbles of clear plastic. There was street sculpture. Cars were banned. State already had a subway, and now buses were allowed to roam free. "Like a herd of elephants," said Chicago Tribune architectural critic Blair Kamen.

It was pretty much what is prescribed for Market Street in San Francisco: a transit-only main street, attractive to pedestrians and transit riders.

"It was supposed to make the street more enticing to shoppers," Kamen wrote. "In fact, exactly the opposite occurred."

"We began talking about taking it out in 1980," said Minor, who became chairman of the Greater State Street Council. "By 1981, we knew it had failed."

WHAT WENT WRONG?

What went wrong? Phillip Enquist, a partner at the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, said the mall drew all the life out of State Street. Banning cars, said Kamen, "cut off State Street from the rest of the Loop."

"A street," Kamen said, "needs cars to give it scale. I know that sounds crazy, but what happens is it cuts off the street from the city. It is as if you cut off the heart from the arteries."

"It took the excitement out of State Street," said Elizabeth Hollander, a former Chicago planning commissioner who is now with DePaul University.

At night, when the office workers left, State Street was deserted. The wide sidewalks looked empty, even when they were crowded. The Loop reportedly had one of the lowest crime rates in the city, but without crowds, people thought State Street was unsafe.

"We created an image that nothing happened after 5 p.m.," said Minor.

"The street hit its lowest ebb, rock-bottom," he said.

They don't fool around in Chicago: If you have muscle, you use it. "The downtown businesses are the engine that runs the city," said Minor. And downtown wanted a change.

"We talked to our customers," he said. "They all said they wanted to drive on State. They wanted to drop people off at the door of the store and park later. Cars are part of our culture."

WIDER, BUSIER STATE STREET

Skidmore, Owings and Merrill designed a new State Street: The street was widened from two lanes to four at the expense of the wide sidewalks and the sidewalk sculpture. The food kiosks were scrapped.

Street planters were put in, with seasonal trees, honey ash and locust, plenty of decorative greens in the winter and flowers in the spring. The new streetlights went out and vintage 1926 lights came in. The sidewalks were narrowed. "It is axiomatic that crowds attract more crowds," Kamen wrote, "that a little jostling is a good thing."

Enquist, who spent 11 years in San Francisco, had a big role in State Street, and his aim, he said, "was to let State Street be State Street, to be a big-city street."

When Mayor Richard M. Daley cut the ribbon to reopen the street, a year and a week ago, the cars all came back. "It was as if they never left," said Enquist.

State Street still has problems, but it also has a vitality, as a recent visit showed. The sidewalks are crowded, some new stores are moving in, and Enquist and Chicago assistant commissioner for planning and development Alicia Mazur say the district has even attracted some residential use, especially for students and in the upper floors of older buildings.

Enquist, Minor and Kamen, the critic, all see parallels between what happened on State Street and what is proposed for Market Street. "If you turned that street into a transit mall, it would be a big mistake," said Minor. "If it failed everywhere else, why do you think it would succeed in San Francisco?"

SHARP DIVISIONS OVER BANNING CARS ON MARKET

To many in San Francisco, the private car is the enemy.

The mayor, the League of Conservation Voters, the Green Party, San Francisco Tomorrow and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition all want to close Market Street to cars, leaving it to Municipal Railway buses, taxis and delivery trucks.

"It would make the Muni move faster, improve pedestrian safety and remove cars, the one component of Market Street traffic that causes the most problems," said Sharon Bretz, vice president of the city's Parking and Traffic Commission. "Not that many cars use Market Street," she says, "but they are the ones that tie it up."

Market Street is similar to Chicago's State Street, but the mix of traffic is different.

State has more cars, but Market has more bicycles, not the vehicle of choice in Chicago's severe climate.

There is also fierce opposition to closing Market; these critics say the cure would be worse than the disease. Banning cars on Market, they say, would only put them south of Market, and turning the street over to Muni buses and streetcars would be a blow to Market Street's retail businesses.

"This is a solution in search of a problem," said James Chappell, president of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has voted to study the idea carefully, as the proposal is complex. Though Mayor Willie Brown favors closing the street to cars from Sixth Street to Steuart Street, near the Ferry Building, the study will also include closing Market from Van Ness Avenue east to Steuart.

Nothing will be done without a complete study, the city says -- and the forces on either side, business and social, guarantee that nothing will happen without a huge city debate.

But, said Bretz, closing Market could be done simply and at low cost. "And if we don't like it," she said, "we can open it up again." -- Carl Nolte

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